Importing Large Video Files to iMovie

Question

Importing Large Video Files to iMovie

Hi,

I have used iMovie before to make videos. I have usually shot the video on my iPhone or GoPro and then uploaded it to iPhoto on my Mac. In the past these videos have been rather small, but now I have some longer/larger videos (15+ mins long / 2gb) that I want to upload to iMovie. Whenever I go into iMovie and try to import the videos from iPhoto the import process begins for about 2 seconds and then immediately stops. I can't get iMovie to upload the larger videos. Any ideas on how to upload my larger videos into iMovie so I can then work with them? Does iMovie have any file import size limitations?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

MacBook Pro, iOS 8.1

Posted on Feb 13, 2015 5:41 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

GeeD

Level 6

9,173 points

Feb 14, 2015 2:21 AM in response to thenewpillage

First some questions:

Have you waited for long enough? Do you get any error message? Does iMovie become unresponsive?

I am not aware of any iMovie limitation on the size of clips that can be imported. Do you have at least 20 GB free on the drive/partition that contains your library? (I'm assuming that you are using iMovie 10).

Have you tried dragging and dropping the video file from your iPhoto library directly into your imovie event with the finder? This an alternative to using the import function?

Geoff.

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Answer 2

Feb 14, 2015 4:44 PM in response to GeeD

Geoff,

Thank you for your response! I was able to get the videos into iMovie by using your recommendation to drag and drop the videos from iPhoto into iMovie. I will definitely use this workaround down the road.

To answer your other questions. I never received an error message. The load screen would pop up for about 2 seconds and then disappear. I would wait and wait but nothing would happen. iMovie never became unresponsive, it just wouldn't continue the load/import process after I selected the video.

Once again, thank you for your help!

-Thenewpillage

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